Chapter Text
Another day, another sermon. Terzo was well used to giving them at this point. At times they definitely could be fun, he enjoyed spreading the word and teachings of his dark lord. This week… hell, for the past few months, things had just felt a bit repetitive, like he was just going through the motions.
He tried to entertain himself during some of the chants and prayers. Focusing in on the faces in the crowd, seeing how many he could name, how many he recognised, and how many he didn’t. His attention eventually caught onto one new face in the crowd. Not just because he didn’t recognise them, there were so many people in the church he couldn’t possibly know everyone, especially with him being Papa and having to tour for months at a time.
His attention was caught on this face because they didn’t partake in any prayer or chant. The person, the girl, she seemed a little confused by the entire sermon. She didn’t know when to sit, when to bow, anything. She was clearly very new to the church. Papa had finally found something to keep him entertained. While one of the elder sisters did a reading Terzo turned to Sister Imperator, who had been standing beside him as he sat in his elaborately carved wooden chair.
“Who is that?” He whispered, leaning over to Imperator slightly, causing her to whip her head in Papa’s direction, brows knitted tight. “The girl in the back, without her hair covered.”
It was quite easy to spot the girl as most of the sisters and females in the church had been veiled during the service.
“Oh, her.” Imperator's thin lips pursed together tight. “the pagan.”
“Scusi? Pagan?” He repeated to Imperator, thinking he may have misheard the sister.
“Yes.” Imperator sighed with a rise and fall of her steady chest. “We have a shocking lack of witches left in our church at the moment Papa.”
“Yes, this I know.” He nodded as he continued to stare at the new girl, waiting on the sister to elaborate further.
“We have to take what we can. Especially in these times.” She stood up a little straighter, tucking her hands behind her back and sticking her chin up, giving her an air of confidence, or maybe arrogance. She was seemingly annoyed by the conversation topic, perhaps because the lack of witches had brought about some stress to the sister and the church itself. It may also have been due to the fact that Terzo still had not been filled in on the full extent of it since his return from touring, last week.
“So, she’s not a sister?” Terzo continues his questioning, pulling Imperator back out of her musings.
“No.” She spoke flatly.
“Or a follower of lucifer?” The Papa’s eyes narrowed at Imperator in assessment.
“No.” Her voice remained flat as her gaze moved through the crowd gathered in the church, trying to seem unbothered although she had been secretly worried about how Terzo was going to react to such a decision being made without him being so much as told. Not that she was scared of Terzo, she just didn’t want the drama of him acting like the spoilt child she believed him to be. But instead, she found him almost chuckling at it.
“Oh wow.” He hummed in amusement. “How new age of you, sister.”
“We need all the magick we can Papa.” Imperator rolled her eyes at the man. “She gets a place to stay, a community, we get her assistance in spell work.”
“Oh, I’m not complaining. I’m just surprised. You surprise me, everyday sister.” Terzo teased, trying to hide his smirk behind his leather, gloved hand.
Imperator's face remained as still and as cold as a statue.
“How many witches do we have now, sister?” Terzo asked as he finally swallowed down the remnants of his amusement.
“We’re down to five.”
“Five!?” Papa whisper shouts. Covering his mouth with his hand again in slight embarrassment, hoping not to draw the attention of any of the congregation. Luckily he didn’t.
“Including her, six.”
Terzo shook his head slightly in annoyance before furthering his line of questioning. “How in sweet Satan’s name did this happen?”
“You know exactly how it did Papa.” Sister Imperator continues staring out at the people of the church before finally turning to Terzo. “Now stop gawking with your mouth open like that before you start to catch flies.”
Terzo’s mouth closes into a frown, one that can’t last too long as the elder sister that had the church's attention had now finished her reading. He nods to the sister as she steps down to let Papa take back over in leading the next reading.
—
The church had always relied upon the assistance of witches. They were often thought to be very important members of the community, providing healing to the members, hexes to the church’s enemies, bringing in success, and abundance, and most importantly assisting in rituals.
Witches being persecuted throughout history had naturally drawn them to the abbey, a perfect safe haven for them to worship and live free.
However, over the years, the number of witches within the church began to dwindle, for a multitude of reasons. One was that witches were becoming harder to come by, not as many were deciding to procreate and with the desecularization of society as a whole, witches had less need to seek out protection from the church. Or so they had thought.
Other witches, ones who knew more of the dangers that lurked behind the scenes had gone into hiding. Assimilating into society as your average joe. There were rumours, whispers of modern-day witch trials. Ones that happened away from society's watchful eyes. Hateful humans that lingered in the shadows, watching, waiting for the moment they could carry out what they thought to be their divine justice.
Not many knew of this and anyone who tried to speak out got mysteriously silenced. However Imperator knew, and the higher-ups of the clergy did too. It only added to the reasons why Imperator was so adamant to welcome any witch she could to the church with open arms.
—
Terzo’s observations of you were true, you had no idea what the fuck you were doing. A lot of things in the church seemed confusing to you but you were so grateful for everything they had given you. You had a place to live, lots of equipment and room to do your workings in, and had even made some friends. It was actually one of your childhood friends, Sarah who had mentioned to you about joining the church, you hadn’t seen her in a couple of years and just happened to run into her one night at a bar.
You of course asked her what she had been up to and where she had been. You had been close all through your life and then two years ago, she just went AWOL.
When she told you she had joined and was now a sister in a church you thought she was joking but when she explained the church she was in worshipped Satan, that’s when things began to make sense.
“Fair enough”. Was your reply before your curious mind began popping up with questions to ask her. It did seem very interesting but you wanted to make sure your friend didn’t join some weird cult. The more she talked about the church the more intrigued you became.
Sarah could tell you were interested so she happily rambled on about it some more until a delightful idea popped into her mind.
“Hey, aren’t you a witch?” She asked. You nodded along to your friend. It wasn’t something many people knew about but yes you had come from a long line of witches, your friends knew this. You could see the excitement spark in your friend's eyes as she began to infodump about how the church needed witches and how you should totally join. It did sound appealing, free food, accommodation, and getting to work on your craft all day instead of some regular customer service job.
“That all sounds lovely but I’m not even a Satanist. I’m devoted to the pagan gods, remember?”
“Yeah but your polytheistic right?” Sarah’s smirk became wider.
Oh, she was definitely going to talk you into this.
“Yes, that’s kind of a big part of being pagan, Sarah .” You teased your friend, rolling your eyes as your straw swished around the fruity cocktail she had bought for you.
“And you work with more than one pantheon, right?” Her eyebrows lifted in excitement.
“Yeah but-” you tried stopping her in her tracks.
“Well, just think of it as another pantheon.” She blurted out before you could finish. She did have a point.
You bite your lip in a brief hesitation before you drop your shoulders in somewhat of a defeat of the internal battle you had been fighting.
“Would your church even want me?”
That it did. Desperately.
So here you were, feeling like a little fish in a big pond but there was still something exciting about it all. You’d been at the church for less than a week so you tried to not stress yourself out too much about not knowing all the ropes. One of the things you found the strangest was demons, wait, no…, ghouls, that’s what they were called here right? Ghouls walking around the place.
It was a little frightening to you at first, you’d never seen one in real life before but the ones you had brief interactions with actually seemed really lovely. There was one ghoul that hung out in the little friend group you hung out with, which were really Sarah’s friends but they adopted you into the group when they saw your lost puppy look. They all seemed to really care and look after each other which was a nice change from all the fakeness you used to have to deal with in the outside world.
When it came to work, you would work to a schedule along with some of the other witches in the church, they were all a lot older than you but were very motherly and sweet although quite crude, but you enjoyed that.
On Mondays, you would be working in the shop which was a small room within the Abby where the witches would sell potions, candles, and other magickal items as well as give readings. On Tuesday and Wednesday, you would craft the items and workings that were needed for said shop. Thursdays and Fridays would be days for you to work with clients who were people within the church who had requested certain spells, healing sessions, aura cleansing, etc. then Saturdays and Sundays were free, that was unless you were to be required to help with a ritual or called else were but neither of those things had happened yet.
Because you had no clients yet, as it was only your first week and that the church had just so happened to have a little market open, you had been sent by one of the crone witches to work in said market.
Once a year The church allowed the courtyard to be filled with stalls for different members of the church to sell goods. There were foods, trinkets, jewellery, and even sex toys. It was like Etsy in real life but for Satanists…
The stall was just like a mini version of the shop, selling potions, fully loaded spell candles, crystals, etc. As well included was a list of workings the shop had to offer and a list of the types of magickal services you, yourself provided.
It was good to have the stall out in the courtyard with the rest as it naturally drew more people in, maybe people who would have never thought about going to the shop before.
The day had been very busy but things began to settle down as the evening wore on. It got so quiet that you even managed to get some reading time in, picking up one of the books you were selling, something about dream interpretation.
You got a little bit too invested in the book and hadn’t even noticed when Papa Emeritus III had entered the courtyard and had begun browsing around the stalls, something that made all the other stall owners stand up that bit straighter and bow their heads as he passed.
You didn’t even notice when his gaze fell on you and his lips pulled into a smirk. Sauntering his way towards your stall and brushing a lock of his black hair out of his face he takes a good look up and down your form. Not being a sister meant no uniform and today had been a bit of a hot day so you decided to wear a sundress, with perhaps a bit of a low-cut neckline, which he definitely appreciated.
When Terzo had reached the stall and your eyes still hadn’t left the book in your hands, he turned to look at some of the items you had on sale. Picking up a candle in the shape of a woman’s bare form he sticks his lip out.
“Interesting.” He hums which finally catches your attention. When you look up and notice that the head of the church is now standing in front of you, you slam your book close.
“Papa!” You accidentally blurt out in your shock.”
“Hello, Dolcezza.” His honeyed voice purrs out teasingly as he takes pride in your flustered scrambling when you try standing to your feet, fixing yourself to look ‘proper.’
His brows raise slightly when you both make eye contact.
He enjoyed the idea of teasing you, as he does with many of the young ladies in the church but when he actually got a proper look at your face, he was slightly taken aback.
The growing blush on your cheek, your soft rosy tinted lips, your windswept hair, the gentle lifting of your chest as you breathed, you were quite beautiful. Quite beautiful indeed.
Shaking himself out of his gaze, he turned back to the candle in his hand, the one shaped like a naked lady. He coughed as he put it back down and thanked Satan he was wearing his papal face paint today so that you couldn’t see the man himself blush.
His brows knit together briefly as he tried to shrug it off. He was constantly surrounded by beautiful women, why was he embarrassed now? He could feel your eyes still staring at him so he turned to you trying to put his cool papa demeanour back on. “So how are you enjoying the church?” He asks leaning against the side of your stall.
“Oh, it’s wonderful here!” You begin to perk up. “I’m really enjoying it. Still getting a bit lost sometimes though.” You laugh a little at your confession.
“Ah, you’ll figure this place out soon enough.” Terzo smiles as he shrugs one of his shoulders.
“I’m really grateful for this opportunity Papa. Thank you so much for letting me become a part of this church.” Your hand absent-mindedly found its way to settle in front of your heart, perhaps in a subconscious way of expressing your gratitude.
“Psh. Don’t worry about it.” Trezo brushes it off as if to say it was no problem. Although he would still slightly take credit for it even if it was Imperator’s decision.
“I really mean it though thank you! Please, let me give you something.” You insist to the man.
He lifts his brows for a moment before you finish speaking, his mind already going to the gutter.
“Anything you want from the table you can have, no cost.” You smile up at the man before you. Perhaps it was not what he was expecting but he still appreciated the sentiment nonetheless.
“Oh no, really Cara Mia, don’t worry about it.” Trezo swishes his hand to the side.
“Oh, I insist!” You continued, you knew he was just being nice, and it would really have meant a lot to you to show some kind of appreciation to the man you thought took a chance on allowing you to join the ministry. “I… I also do readings and cleanses, auras, chakras, you name it!”
Terzo puckers his lips in contemplation and then looks at your list of workings.
“What do you specialize in?” He hums as his fingers trace down the list to humour you.
“Mainly healing, protection and divination. But I can do any kind of working!” You chirp as you bat your eyelashes at the man like some kind of excited little bird.
Terzo smirks at you, and your willingness to please. “Well then, maybe I will take you up on that sometime, hm?”
You nod to the man. “yes, of course!”
“Until then.” he flashes you a charming smile as he takes your hand. Lifting it to his lips, he presses a small kiss on the back of it.
The gesture immediately causes your eyes to widen and your cheeks to burn, you try to hide it with a casual smile but you are sure Papa could see right through it as he bid you farwell.